Fun with Files (and Coins)

"Is there something wrong with us that we actually enjoy doing this?" I asked Tiffany on Saturday morning as we sat on our living room floor surrounded by piles of file folders and stacks of coins. It was 6:30.

We were having a double-organizational session. The weekend before we'd purchased a brand-new (to us) honest-to-god four-drawer wooden file cabinet to replace the flimsy six-year-old two-drawer one we bought before we had any files. Now we had to transfer all our files into the new cabinet. We were also finishing wrapping three years worth of coins we'd collected in a gigantic flower vase.

Tiffany didn't hear me.

"Babe," I said, "seriously, is there something wrong with us?"

"Huh? Maybe," she said.

As you've read before (here, here and here, for instance), organizing is Tiffany's favorite task. She is a super-organizer. In an abundance of caution, she makes a file for everything.

Everything.

"I'm going to put the instruction manual for our bike rack in a Sporting Good Instruction Manual File," she said.

Organizing is not my favorite task. I'm actually quite bad at it. I believe in broad categories of files, like: Miscellaneous Financial and Important Documents. This is why I am unorganized.

"Do we have enough sporting good instruction manuals for a file?" I asked. "Or couldn't that just go in with all the other manuals in the Tech Manuals file?"

She stared at me, horrified, then shook her head as if to clear my ignorance from her brain.

We went about our tasks quietly for a few minutes.

Then:

"I don't have very much in my Joke file," she said sadly.

"Your what?"

"My joke file," she said. "My dad has one. You know, to stuff little jokes and things."

"Where do you find such jokes?" I teased.

Secretly, I admire the file. I have a terrible habit of never remembering joke punch lines. A Joke File might be just the ticket. On the other hand, forgetting a punch line and then asking my audience to "hold please" while I checked my Joke File didn't seem very funny either.

"This is my favorite," she said.

I looked up.

My girlfriend--who's been successfully self-employed for some time and markets herself here--held a file called Tiffany's Old Resumes upside down.

Nothing came out.